Paulo Reis ///

Monocromatismo as an Affirming of the World

After Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, art –or the environment of art as defined by Arthur Danto– could call the most banal of industrial objects art as long as they had been chosen by the artist to be placed in a museum. The certainty in Duchamp's ready-mades went beyond Cézanne's doubt about representation, and since then decision about what is art or not has belonged exclusively to the artist. Also according to Danto, our culture has developed two ways, or rather two categories, to relate to the art of the present. The first one is less complex and it is where Picasso and his similars, as afterwards it is not necessary to possess the codes operated by these artists in order to understand their works. Even if the public does not understand what is represented by the radical operation perpetrated by Cubism, Picasso and similar artists are and will be audience successes, like a circus attraction.